109 - A Story About Huntokar

Welcome to Night Vale has a lot of really amazing merch, and it's all at welcometonightvale.com.

And you click on store, we've got t-shirts, leggings, blankets, stickers, posters, mugs, bags, holiday carts, throw pillows, blankets, etc., etc.

Oh, ugly Christmas sweaters, whatever you need.

Even if you've been to our merch store before, it's different now.

We're constantly taking down old things and putting up new things.

So if something looks pretty dope to you, get it soon because who knows if it'll be there for long.

I'm really right now, I just got a bunch of stuff.

I'm really enjoying my mutated vegetable tea towel designed by Jessica Hayworth, my University of What It Is sweatshirt, and of course, my Moonlight All-Night Diner coffee mug.

Plus, we have dozens more things for you or someone you love for the holidays or just on a lark.

Go to welcometonightveil.com and click on store.

If you're dying for the next batch of Wednesday season 2 to drop on Netflix, then I'll let you in on a secret.

The Wednesday Season 2 official Wocast is already here.

Dive deeper into the mysteries of Wednesday with the Ultimate Companion Video Podcast.

Join the frightfully funny Caitlin Riley along with her producer, Thing, as she sits down with the cast and crew.

Together, they'll unravel each shocking twist, dissect the dynamics lurking beneath, unearth Adam's family lore, and answer all of your lingering questions.

Guests include Emma Myers, Joy Sunday, Hunter Doohan, Steve Buscemi, Fred Armison, Catherine Zeta Jones, the Joanna Lumley, also show creators Al Goh and Miles Miller, and of course Wednesday herself, Jenna Ortega, plus many, many more.

With eight delightfully dark episodes to devour, you'll be drawn into the haunting halls of Nevermore Academy deeper than ever before.

But beware, you know where curiosity often leads.

The Wednesday season two official wocast is available in audio and video on todoom.com or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

This is a story about Huntokar, said a voice on the radio.

A voice you had never heard before, though she has been speaking to you your whole life.

I am Huntokar.

The destroyer.

You have already been destroyed.

You just don't know it yet.

Once,

long before this sorrowful now, there was only the mudwomb.

We gods waiting to be born.

The woman from Italy, the distant prince, so many others.

We waited for time and space to begin.

In the mudwomb, nothing ever happened.

Even the idea of action was impossible.

In the mudwomb, you weren't yet, but you knew that someday you would be.

And then history began, and we scattered out into the light and the hours.

How simple and easy everything seemed in those first few millennia.

There was only ever one of anything.

The woman from Italy dipped her hand into the stars, running her fingers through the great glowing coils of the universe.

The distant prince explored every far-off cave and every out-of-the-way hole, all of the dark places.

A cloud in the corner of the sky glowed, changing colors every second and dropping dead animals long before animals ever ever existed.

I sat cross-legged in a lake for 10,000 years.

But nothing lasts forever.

Not even us.

Soon there were other beings in this universe and everything changed.

The woman from Italy became fascinated at the pain that could be inflicted on these creatures.

The distant prince began to shape some of them into wounded servants driven wild by what he had done to them.

The Glow Cloud controlled the minds of any that got too close.

And I,

I thought I was the exception.

I thought that I would nurture them rather than rule them.

I was, of all of us, the only good one.

But it was I who would end up truly destroying them.

I've spent every moment since my mistake trying to put back together what I took apart, but

it is beyond me.

Every action that endeavors to improve only causes more suffering and terror.

Even my appearance, once a source of awe, is now to them strange and horrifying.

Nothing fits together like it used to.

Cecil.

Sweet Cecil.

Who I tried and tried to guide toward the truth, but I could never quite say the words.

I am the destroyer, I would say to him.

But what could he make of that?

My cowardice concealed the details of my crime.

I couldn't bear to repeat them.

Until now.

I say this in every world at once.

Everyone must understand what happened.

This is a story about Huntakar, but is also a story about you and them and every poor soul who hears it.

Of course I say Cecil singular as though there were one of anything.

But as we now know, there is not one of anything.

There's a Cecil who would not listen.

There's a Cecil who listened, but could not comprehend.

There's a Cecil who did his utmost but who failed.

There's a Cecil who was gone long before I came.

There is Cecil and Cecil and Cecil, and then there is me.

Trying to explain to him over and over about the choice I made.

But all that ever comes out is the truth.

I am Huntokar, I say.

I am the destroyer.

All true.

All useless.

Each of us in those early days chose our domains.

The glow cloud in the clouds.

The distant prince in the distance.

The woman from Italy, everywhere but Italy.

We could each of us do whatever we wanted in the places that we chose.

There was no criteria for my choice.

I came across a valley, dry, almost lifeless, save for a few brave people who had worked out how they could be sustained there.

And I chose them.

I guided and taught them.

And gradually a town grew.

Nightvale.

The one place in the world that was truly mine.

I am the creator.

And it was, I suppose, in the moment that I first felt love for my creation, that the fuse for the unraveling of all things was lit.

Although it would not happen for many centuries, at the very inception of my greatest satisfaction and happiness, this tragedy became inevitable.

Worship of me started as they became aware of my kind presence in their lives.

Their love gave meaning to the passing of my years, and in exchange, I gave them a better and better world.

They developed ceremonies devoted to me, wearing soft meat crowns and building what would become known as Bloodstone Circles.

And this is how it was for a long time.

Nightvale was not a place with any distinction to anyone in the world, except for me.

who watched over it and loved it.

A love that would spell its end.

Now, in this destroyed world, I am forgotten.

Still they have bloodstones and still they worship, but never does anyone ask, what is being worshipped in those circles?

Why do we have all of this meat strapped to our heads?

What once was tribute is now a series of gestures, as human and meaningless as they were before I came along.

They see glowing arrows in the sky, dotted lines and circles, and they think nothing of them.

Air traffic, space debris, weird birds.

They do not, cannot, will not read the messages from their God.

The only ones that truly remember me are the oldest ones, the ones that stand outside of time.

The faceless old woman who came to this country trying to find some answer to a long-ago betrayal.

She remembers me, although she would never speak up for me.

Her ways are ways of sorrow, and they only lead her to herself.

She is a closed loop of a person.

The Glow Cloud remembers me, but can do no more than flash welcoming colors to say hello.

I have no human mind it can control, so there is no way for us to speak.

And of course the others, the distant prince, the woman from Italy, the five-headed dragons,

that beagle.

They know exactly who I am.

And more is the doom of Night Vale for that.

The path to this destruction was laid by the humans.

They invented a bomb of utter dread, a weapon so horrible it could never be used, and then threatened to use it.

Fools.

They faced across the water.

squabbling over misunderstood ideas and announcing in louder and louder voices that they were prepared to end their species' history over a point of pride.

Some of the gods encouraged it, enjoying chaos and fear as entertainment and spreading paranoia as they moved through the world.

I tried to keep Nightbale calm, but even my children weren't immune to the growing fear.

And then the day came, November 7, 1983.

A practice Armageddon mistaken for the real thing, and so, through this misunderstanding, transformed into actual Armageddon.

The power of a fearful thought.

The bombs were in the air.

There were only minutes left.

The people of Nightvale huddled, waiting for the end to their story.

I could see it as it was about to happen.

I could see the flash and the tower of fire, the heat that transforms a body into only its shadow.

The slow sickness and the dying of crops.

I could see starvation and a winter that would not end.

I could see all of this, as though it had already happened.

I looked up into the sky as the people around me wept and said goodbye to each other.

And I saw something else.

A planet of awesome size lit by no sun.

An invisible Titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans.

It hung so close that it filled the entire sky.

And that was the moment that I decided,

no,

I would save them.

I would save the town I created.

I am the savior.

It was a simple idea.

I would have to remove Night Vale from this ending world.

I didn't know if it would work.

I'd never seen any god try this.

But I only had minutes.

And I knew that I must save my town.

I was naive, but lovingly so.

You should not forgive me just because I had love in my heart.

Intentions never matter.

Nightbale would stand alone, disconnected from all of the rest of the universe, but safe.

Or

that was what I thought.

No action is without consequence.

I am the destroyer.

What happened next was a horrible cracking noise.

A noise like I had never heard before, like no one had ever heard before, because this particular thing had never been broken.

Not in the history of all possible histories.

When I tried to lift Night Vale out of the world it belonged in, I shattered reality.

And I did not shatter reality just in my night veil, but in all night veils, all night veils that were or could be.

Every possible night veil in every possible universe broke simultaneously and fell into each other.

There was a nightvale exactly like my nightvale, but in which on a single day, a single citizen wore a green shirt instead of a yellow shirt.

There was a nightvale that had grown into a great metropolis, skyscrapers and crowds and little bars where people sat and talked about the great things they would write when they stopped going out to little bars so much.

There was a nightvale that never was in a world where humans never came to be.

There was a nightvale in which Old Woman Josie would never die, and there was a nightvale in which she had never lived.

There was a nightvale in a world that had flooded, and this town floated on the water and thrived, its lights spreading iridescent over the waves like an oil slick.

There was a nightvale in which there was no hunt-okar, and this town should have been safe from me.

But then all of the other nightvales fell into it, and it too was destroyed by my action.

Every nightvale then, every nightvale now.

Every night veil past and present, every town with every possible person making every possible important and unimportant choice, all of them.

A fractal of nightvale,

an endless iteration of Cecil and citizens.

And in my moment of foolish hope, in my belief that I could save anything,

I reached out my clumsy hand and destroyed them all.

I guess here is where Cecil would say it.

So,

Cecil, I'll say it for you.

Let's take a look at the weather.

plan.

Better that than to have nothing to suffer through.

The money's made of the man, you're overplaying your hand.

I only wanted you for something to do.

You're made of mouth and meat, whiskey, and shitty TV.

Stare on the grain through the glass until you can't even see.

It's what you're doing.

We're ripping ruins.

It's only true.

I'm sleeping on the

free.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whoa!

I wanna be fine.

I think you're sorry for eyes.

So don't want your hurry to die.

You sorry, son of a bitch, you never don't even try.

You got a counter-attack, it's just a matter of fact.

I made her metal, and the metal's made to shatter you back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

I'm the fight.

Yeah,

You needed something to stoke, to round your neck with a choke.

You couldn't guild yourself a lily to keep your head.

Cause you're too pretty to swo, too fucking bad to be pro.

You're so alive, you think you'd rather be dead?

These are the spoils of war.

I know I'll never be bored.

Am I your enemy now?

You'll never know if I'm sure.

The best of you wrong, smell back into strong.

The enemy's better over you to make you the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do you want me to say?

You made a fucking mistake.

You can't be growing so far, but you're like the break.

Go on and shout me and trip.

It doesn't matter to me.

Your body couldn't be nobody's body running to me.

You're,

a better

friend,

turn on me up.

Yeah,

my little friend.

You

turn on me right.

Yeah.

When you look into the shadows, do you ever feel something looking back?

If you're looking for your next great fiction podcast, something dark, immersive, and just a little unsettling, listen to The Void, the new series from Fable and Folly.

It's made for fans of horror, sci-fi, and seriously spooky stories.

In the town of Milton, the darkness isn't just in your head, it's in the woods.

They call it the void, a cursed expanse that surrounds the town and swallows anyone who dares to leave.

But when a strange old man shares a mysterious pamphlet that promises a path through the void, Sam and his friends set off on a journey that unravels everything that they thought they knew about their home.

The void is dark, atmospheric, and relentlessly tense with cinematic sound design, a full voice cast, and a haunting musical score.

Think Stranger Things meets Super 8, but in podcast form.

Search for the void wherever you get your podcasts and step carefully.

The woods are watching.

Hey, it's Jeffrey Kraner with a word from our sponsor.

You're on a desert island, but not a deserted island.

Someone else is there.

Something else is there.

In the water, surrounding you lurks a mythical beast with two large eyes and many long arms.

You're just now hearing of this beast, but you're not afraid because you don't plan to swim.

Though that water looks nice, you're good at talking yourself into things, and soon you are in the sea, frolicking and splashing.

You even squeal, thinking you're all alone.

But you forgot what I just said.

You're not alone.

Something wraps itself around you.

It lifts you high in the air, waving you about at dizzying heights.

You look down and see the mythical kraken.

You start to scream, but in its other tentacles are bottles of kraken black spiced rum and kraken gold spiced rum.

I love kraken rum, you say.

It's bold, smooth, and made with a blend of spices.

You high-five the beast as it sets you back down on the island, along with the bottles of kraken rum.

It winks and tells you kraken rum is ideal for Halloween cocktails and disappears back into the dark, briny depths.

Visit the official sponsor of Welcome to Night Vale, Kraken Rum.com to release the Kraken this Halloween.

Copyright 2025, Kraken Rum Company, Kraken Rum.com.

Like the deepest sea, the Kraken should be treated with great respect and responsibility.

Night Vale is shattered,

but for now is still here.

It moves.

And so the towns, every possible version of the town, balance precariously on their broken reality.

Some versions of the town fell completely into other versions, becoming folded in their reality in unexpected combinations.

Others merely open borders with my original night veil, doorways through which travel was possible, but not advisable.

For a while, I believe we could go on like this.

If we only put our heads down and insisted on living, without looking at or considering the world around us, we could just keep moving.

And the main thing was to keep moving.

Denial was key.

As long as we denied, then nothing was wrong.

The other gods were attracted to the sight of my teetering domain, but I was able to arrange truces with them.

They did not do anything that would upset the balance by which my world barely hung.

And in exchange, they could poke their heads in, look around,

maybe take a few versions of my Night Vale to turn into playgrounds for their terror-filled delights.

Others were drawn, not only gods.

There were those that came to help, like the angels that Night Veil denied as as strongly as they denied their own situation.

And there were those who came for debased purposes of their own, like those awful men in their awful crates.

The important thing wasn't a life worth living.

The important thing was just a life that continued.

But now the five-headed dragons in their grief and anger have pulled all of the other gods into this situation.

And

our fragile truce is ending.

The cracks are widening.

All possible night bells are opening up to each other.

There will never be only one of anything ever again.

When all realities are real, sense cannot be made.

Everything at once is essentially nothing at all.

I've tried so hard to keep Night Bell moving forward, unaware of what had happened to it.

Blissfully ignorant.

But my efforts end here.

The world is finally falling apart, piece by piece, and I stand by

all the powers of my thousands of years and I can only watch it fall.

Cecil, sweet Cecil, whose life lies directly on the fault lines of this broken reality, he narrates his own ending without realizing it is his ending.

He does not understand what is happening to him.

And so,

here I am,

telling you this story, so that at least in your destruction, you will understand who has destroyed you.

And you will understand that she destroyed only out of a loving desire to save you.

May you perceive her as foolish and naive.

rather than monstrous.

Even as I speak, I look up up into the sky and see that dark planet of awesome size perched in its sunless void, an invisible titan,

a thick black forest and jagged mountains and deep turbulent oceans.

It's so close now.

I can see it just above me.

Maybe even if I tried very hard, I could touch it.

This has been a story about Huntokar.

She who thought she could save.

She who, in saving,

instead destroyed.

I am the storyteller.

The story may do you no good.

But a story is never for the listener.

It is always for the one who tells.

Good night, my night bill.

Good night.

Welcome to Night Vale is a production of Night Vale Presents.

It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Joseph Fink.

The voice of Hunt Carr was Tina Parker.

Original music by Disperition.

All of it can be found at disparition.info or at disparition.bandcamp.com.

This episode's weather was Full Metal Dark by The Royal They.

Find out more at theroyalve.bandcamp.com.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcometonightvelle.com or follow us on Twitter at Night Vale Radio.

Or use Google Street View to take a slow, leisurely walk in a city you'll never visit.

Check out WelcomeTonightvale.com for more information on this show and a ton of amazing t-shirts and lab coats and other weird nightvale things we've made with a small team of incredible artists.

And while you're there, consider clicking the donate link.

You can have Cecil talk to you personally.

It's all in that link.

Today's proverb: less is more.

Simplification is the way to happiness.

You are not your things.

Anyway, thanks for your wallet.

Bye.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-liter jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director.

You might know me from the League Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We love movies and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas and I don't.

He's too old.

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

It is.

Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

We're talking Parasite the Home Alone, From Grease to the Dark Knight.

We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of, like Kanja and Hess.

So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Hi, we're Meg Bashwiner.

And Joseph Fink.

Of Welcome to Night Vale.

And on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the golden age of television.

To do that, we're watching watching the IMDb viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows.

The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Krusher has sex with a ghost.

The episode of The X-Files, where Skelly gets attacked by a vicious house cat, and also the really good episodes, too.

What can we learn from the best and worst of great television?

Like, for example, is it really a bad episode, or do people just hate women?

The best worst, available wherever you get your podcasts.